The project gave unemployed writers (including, it's rumored though disputed, Hollywood's Nelson Algren) work during lean times, and focused on community meals—church suppers, clambakes, political BBQs and the like. The idea was to capture the spirit of simple regional home cooking and the colorful lore and customs surrounding it. Some foods described (and served for lunch at the Symposium) included: mashed potato salad, apple stack cake, devilled eggs, and ambrosia (orange slices sprinkled with sugar and coconut), to name just a few. (We made six salmon loaves with a recipe from a 1936 edition of The Christian Science Monitor for the event.)

There was often a sense of ingenuity and thrift in these meals, using home-grown and home-preserved ingredients, as well as a general feeling of community and pulling together to make use of scant resources. Potluck at its best.

We were doing some thinking about films of the era that bring this spirit to life. It Happened One Night (1934) and Sullivan's Travels (1941) are good examples with their on-the-road pooling of scant resources, as is The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), where department a store clerk (Jean Arthur) shares her brought-from-home lunch of tuna popovers with tycoon in disguise (Charles Coburn). And then, of course, there's The Grapes of Wrath (1940), where a migrant family is given bread and candy at a truck stop (above, left) and then, in turn, feeds hungry children at a campsite (above, right).